Month: December 2017

College seeks to close “cultural gap” with “patriotism class”

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A new requirement at a Midwestern college teaches first-year college students patriotism and skills valued by the military.

The course is “a balance against a pervasive negative view of America,” Jerry C. Davis, president of College of the Ozarks—a Christian school in Point Lookout, MO—told Inside Higher Ed’s Nick Roll.

Davis’s goal is to close the cultural gap between the 99% of American citizens who don’t serve in the military and the 1% who do.

To that end, the course combines elements from the ROTC curriculum with physical conditioning, patriotic education, map reading, land navigation, rifle marksmanship, rope knotting, military organization, protocol regarding the American flag, and civics.

Davis stated that the college’s goal is to encourage an understanding of the American heritage, an appreciation of one’s civic responsibilities, as well as love of country and a willingness to defend it. He said the course was not a reaction to recent protests by National Football League players who have kneeled during the national anthem, nor is it a reaction to anything else. In September, however, Davis announced that the College of the Ozark’s sports teams would not play opposing teams whose athletes refused to stand for the national anthem, the article reported.

On October 23, the college had a media day for local outlets. As shown in a Kansas City Star video, students arrived in military formation and were addressed by Terrence Dake, a retired Marine four-star general who is an alumnus and member of the school’s Board of Trustees.

Freshman Taylan Saylor told the Associated Press that the required class builds camaraderie among students. “We all go through kind of the same thing,” he said, “ so going through a patriotic class where we are learning about our country and fostering a love for that country together is really special.”

In a survey fielded in 2016 and reported in The Vanishing Center of American Democracy, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture found that, “Eight of ten (81%) [respondents] also agree that ‘America is an exceptional nation with a special responsibility to lead the world.’ Overwhelmingly (93%), they also describe themselves as patriotic.”

High school history and civics teachers are well positioned to prepare students for responsible civic participation. To that end, the Center for Civic Education offers this lesson in Citizenship and the U.S. Constitution to understand U.S. citizenship in its historical context.

Viral video spotlights bullying problem

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A candid video of a Tennessee 6th-grader reflecting on the cruelty of his school tormentors has sparked a massive groundswell of support, including a GoFundMe campaign, celebrity shout-outs, and talk-show appearances.

Kimberly Jones recorded the video of her son Keaton describing daily harassment from bullies when she picked him up from school at lunch on a recent Friday and posted it to Facebook. In less than a week, it was viewed more than 11 million times and sparked offers to attend University of Tennessee Volunteers games, an appearance on “CBS This Morning,” and several other opportunities.

“Just out of curiosity, why do they bully? What’s the point of it?” Keaton asked his mother in the video. “Why do you find joy in taking innocent people and finding a way to be mean to them? It’s not ok.”

“What do they say to you?” the boy’s mother responded.

Keaton has a slight facial deformity and a scar on his head from birth.

“They make fun of my nose. They call me ugly. They say that I have no friends,” he said.

“What did they do to you at lunch?” Kimberly Jones asked.

“Poured milk on me and put ham down my clothes,” Keaton said. “Threw bread at me.”

“Is it just you?” his mother asked. “Or is it other kids who feel that way?”

“They say it to other kids too,” Keaton said.

“How does that make you feel?” she continued.

“I don’t like that they do it to me and I for sure don’t like that they do it to other people,” Keaton said. “Cause it’s not ok.”

“People that are different don’t need to be criticized about it. It’s not their fault. But if you are made fun of, just don’t let it bother you,” the boy said, tears streaming down his cheeks. “They suck, I guess. It’s hard.

But it will probably get better one day.”

Jones attends Horace Maynard Middle School in Maynardville, Tenn., north of Knoxville, according to NPR.

The emotional video quickly drew a flood of responses online, including several from celebrities, sports stars, and A-list singers and actors. NASCAR’s Dale Earnhardt Jr., Fox host Sean Hannity, rapper Snoop Dogg, Donald Trump Jr., Katy Perry, Justin Beiber, LeBron James, and numerous others offered words of encouragement or offers for visits.

Keaton and his mother appeared on CBS This Morning, where the boy said he’s excited his misery turned into something “that could actually change the world.”

The outpouring of support for Keaton is a heartwarming lesson in humanity, and it highlights the much harder challenge of changing school culture and the perspective of students to end bullying.

James Davison Hunter, sociologist and founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, reflected on the issue in his book The Tragedy of Moral Education in America.

“The task of educating children means teaching them the larger designs that could give form and focus to their individual aspirations, so they can come to understand not only how to be good but why,” Hunter wrote.

A lesson plan from The Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues helps students cultivate friendliness and civility, and learn “to accept and praise the right words and deeds of others, whilst rejecting and resisting those that are harmful to themselves or others.”

Using ‘growth mindset’ to learn from mistakes

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Teachers in San Francisco schools are using a “growth mindset” approach to engaging students in math that encourages students to collaborate and embrace mistakes.

Lizzy Hull Barnes explained how teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District are working to change students’ view of and approach to math in a recent column for EdSource.

In an effort to add depth to mathematics instruction in the United States that Barnes describes as “an inch deep and a mile wide,” teachers, professors, and psychologists are pushing for a new approach that goes beyond memorizing steps to involve reasoning and common sense, she wrote.

In the SFUSD, teachers are heading the call with a relatively new curriculum that’s encouraging students to take risks and speak up in a supportive environment, and to learn to make mistakes and work through them together.

Barnes wrote:

Our PreK-12 math curriculum is taught using principles of “growth mindset,” a concept developed by Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Taught with this framework, students learn mathematical reasoning; embrace mistakes as learning opportunities; and work together to build the flexibility and resiliency required for success in math. The goal is to help students stay motivated in the face of challenging work. We’re working to reframe the question, “What does it mean to be good at math?”

Barnes explained that the approach fits well with the district’s focus on social and emotional learning, and a curriculum that promotes group problem-solving and risk-taking in the classroom.

The revamp of the district’s Math Core Curriculum started about four years ago, and officials have continued to refine it using teacher feedback, but so far the results are encouraging.

“Data from a 2016 report by SRI Education show that our students are developing stronger math skills, particularly in their ability to apply concepts and explain their thinking,” Barnes wrote. “Teachers report that students are cooperating more as they discuss tasks and compare solutions. They also see higher levels of student engagement and confidence in math.

“As a district, we are happy to report that more students are gaining access to rigorous math courses.”

The growth mindset, particularly the embrace of mistakes as learning opportunities, is certainly an improvement over a feeling of helplessness in math. There’s more to it than that, however.

Students should also learn how to determine the goals that are worth their effort and persistence, or the purpose behind their work. Essentially, students must understand how they are working toward the “good life,” and what that is.

James Davison Hunter, University of Virginia sociologist and founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, weighed in on the role of psychology in understanding how young people develop character in his book The Death of Character.

Hunter shows that “psychology is in a position to specify the conditions that permit or impede the full realization of a person’s natural creativity, productivity, and well-being.”

Yet despite the clear insights into how children develop—including the growth mindset—the primary question of “what are, in fact, the constituting elements of ‘the good life’” are beyond the reach of many of the current curricula.

The Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues offers the lesson The Tools of Virtue to help educators move beyond the how of learning to the what of virtue.

5th-grader honored for honesty, trustworthiness

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Sycamore Valley Academy 5th-grader Shania Rojas is someone her classmates and teacher can trust, a virtue that the Tulare County Office of Education recognized in December with a feature on the local news.

“Our motto is, ‘I will do what is right because it is right,’ and Shania definitely follows that honor code to the core of herself,” teacher Erika Chan told Your Central Valley. “She follows the moral compass in that she’s sweet with her family, sweet with her friends, teachers, any adults that come into her life.”

Chan said the 10-year-old stands out from her peers because of her character, and her honesty and trustworthiness, in particular.

“I think trustworthiness is something that a lot of adults can’t say they know a lot of people they can trust,” Chan said. “And I think that if we instill those values today, and kids in my class can learn from that and see Shania as a leader in trustworthiness.”

Rojas told the television station she has a lot to be thankful for—“my family, pets, animals, parents, and this school, my friends and my teacher”—and also the recognition from her school district.

“I never felt that feeling that I won something before,” she said. “I guess I was a lucky one to get it.”

Her friends and family seem to think it had more to do with Rojas’ bubbly personality, and strong character virtues.

“She is honest. She cares for other people’s needs and cares for them,” her father, Rolando Rojas, told Your Central Valley. “She is dedicated to her ideas. She is honest and she really cares about others.”

Classmate Rita Rasner contends Rojas’ “character is special in a way that is hard to explain.”

“She makes everyone feel like they’re family,” Rasner said.

Fellow 5th-grader Ellie Elms put it another way.

“She’s like really nice and really thoughtful of other people,” Elms said. “She is very trustworthy, wonderful, amazing, and exceptional.”

The high praise supports observations about character by University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter.

Hunter, who founded the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote in his book The Death of Character:

Character reflects the affirmation of our commitments to a larger community, the embrace of an ideal that attracts us, draws us, animates us, inspires us.

The pressures of testing and teaching can make it easy to forget to honor the fundamental virtue of integrity, but at Rojas’ California school district students are learning the importance of truthfulness by taking the time to celebrate it.

Educators looking to promote truthfulness and other character virtues in students can gain insight from a guide for teachers offered by the Jubilee Centre for Character Virtues.

Seeking alternatives to alternative schools

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A dispute at a drinking fountain at North Augusta High School in 2014 resulted in a weeks-long sentence to an alternative school for 15-year-old Logan Rewis, a decision that changed the course of his academic career and contributed to his decision to drop out of school entirely.

Rewis contends he accidentally dripped water on a teacher’s shoe when sipping from the fountain, while the teacher insisted he intentionally spit on him. Regardless, a tribunal of retired educators sided with the teacher and banished Rewis to the Center for Innovative Learning at Pinecrest, the district’s decrepit alternative school, ProPublica reports.

It wasn’t the first time that school officials sent Rewis to Pinecrest—he previously attended for acting up after his parents divorced —but the more than four-month stint in 2014 marked the beginning of his academic career.

According to ProPublica:

The Center for Innovative Learning was anything but. While the small classes at Pinecrest took pressure off Logan, he wasn’t learning much. His computer-based courses in social studies and science required him to absorb screens and screens of text. “There was a lot of stuff to read and I wasn’t really good at reading,” he recalls. Some kids figured out a way to get around the school’s academic software to surf outside websites, such as Facebook, he says. Other classes taught by teachers were too easy for a high school freshman, he says—his math class spent the period doing multiplication with calculators.

“They didn’t teach me anything at all,” Logan says. His grades in the computer-based courses tanked.

By the time Rewis returned to North Augusta High School 13 weeks later, he’d fallen far behind his peers and struggled to catch up.

“I don’t know any of this, you are way farther ahead of me,” he told his math teacher. “I wasn’t doing anything like this in alternative school.”

Weeks later teachers caught Logan looking at his cell phone twice in the same day, another school violation. North Augusta officials recommended expulsion and set up another hearing, but Rewis didn’t bother to plead his case and dropped out of high school in the spring of 2015.

He eventually moved to Georgia to build chicken houses for his uncle’s company.

Unfortunately, Rewis’ story isn’t unique. ProPublica documented how alternative schools morphed from an idea to offer flexible instruction for kids who didn’t thrive in traditional schools to “places to warehouse students who had broken zero-tolerance policies.”

That trend has seemingly increased as the Obama administration pressured school districts to reduce disproportionately high suspensions of minority students. Despite policies that stipulate that the nonvoluntary transfers to alternative schools should be used as a last resort, many schools are simply using them to lower their suspension and expulsion stats, according to the education site.

Rewis’ mother, Lisa Woodward, believes school administrators “hang these children out to dry.”

“They don’t want nothing else to do with them,” she said.

Murray Milner, senior scholar with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, highlighted how the issues plaguing school discipline are weighing on educators.

Teachers “have few effective sanctions against students, especially those indifferent about grades,” Milner wrote in his book Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids. “Troublemakers can be sent to a counselor or assistant principal, but the teacher who does this too often becomes defined as incompetent.”

With teachers and administrators lacking both low-level sanctions for discipline and effective practices for deescalating contentious situations, many look to suspension, expulsion, and transfer to alternative schools as punishment.

But a growing number of schools are working to change the dynamic, and many are exploring a restorative justice approach to school discipline that aim to reduce suspensions and transfers to alternative schools by encouraging students to work through their problems and repair relationships.

The state of Illinois offers a guide on implementing restorative justice practices for educators seeking a better way.

 

Buddy Benches work when students understand compassion

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Buddy Benches going in on elementary school playgrounds across the country are one of many ways officials are working to curb bullying and build inclusive school cultures.

And while they’re working well in many places, experts are offering guidance to ensure the benches don’t inadvertently make the problem worse by singling out children who already feel isolated, WGBH reports.

First-grade teacher Amanda Minerva recently led an initiative to put a buddy bench on the playground at Mary Lyon K-8 School in Brighton, Mass. The intent, Minerva said, is to give students a place to go when they’re looking for a friend—a way for students to help each other without involving a teacher.

The bench “lets the kids do a little bit more on their own,” she told WGBH. “It kind of pushes them to independence a little bit more instead of coming up to a teacher.”

Minerva gained approval to install the bench this year, and second grader Sophie said it’s working well.

“You sit on this bench when you have no one to play with and when someone wants to play with you, they would come over and say, ‘Do you want to play?’” Sophie said. “Ms. Minerva picked the perfect time to put the buddy bench down, when the new kids were coming (at the beginning of the year). Because they just started this year, they’re still trying to make friends.”

Other students also told the news site the bench has been a good thing, though a WGBH reporter who sat alongside one student on the bench recently noted that none of the other students were interested in joining.

“While these benches allow students to sit in a designated space to find friends, they could have the opposite effect, if those who sit at the bench are seen as unpopular,” according to the news site.

Richard Weissbourd, psychologist and co-director of Harvard University’s Making Caring Common Project, believes the key to success with the buddy bench is laying the groundwork with students to encourage them all the use the bench.

“I wouldn’t just plop (a buddy bench) onto a playground and expect magic to happen,” he said, adding that it’s important to ensure those who use the benches aren’t ostracized. “It takes some preparation.”

It’s also an opportunity for some students to step up, Weissbourd said.

“I think it’s also important,” he told WGBH, “for the kids who are popular to recognize the strengths of the kids who are unpopular and to recognize that they have a role to play in building a caring and inclusive community.”

Essentially, the success of the buddy benches rests largely on developing virtues of kindness and caring in students that compel them to want to help their struggling classmates.

University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter described the process in his book The Death of Character.

“(W)e must acquire a moral sensibility—we learn what is right and wrong, good and bad, what is to be taken seriously, ignored, or rejected as abhorrent—and we learn, in moments of uncertainty, how to apply our moral imaginations to different circumstances. Over time, we acquire a sense of obligation and the disciplines to follow them,” he wrote.

Children who practice caring for others, and observe adults doing the same, will slowly build the character to care for their classmates on the buddy bench.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham offers resources for teachers to encourage students to practice caring for others—through offering friendship on the buddy bench to helping out friends, family and the broader community.

Birmingham hires director of character education

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Reports of racist teasing on an elementary school playground prompted Birmingham Public Schools to swiftly form a Diversity Committee and create a new director of character education position to address the issue.

Dan Nerad, superintendent of the Michigan school district, recently announced Beverly Elementary School Principal Jamii Hitchcock will serve as the district’s first director of character education, diversity, and equity, Hometown Life reports.

The move follows the formation of a Diversity Committee to address racist teasing on the playground at Pierce Elementary School. That committee started meetings in November.

Hitchcock, who has a doctor of philosophy degree from Oakland University, will work to ensure students develop “quality character traits and continually excel in a learning environment that is engaging, global and free of achievement gaps,” according to the job description.

Hitchcock “brings to the position broad experience in school administration and extensive professional development in the areas of diversity, equity and inclusion,” Nerad told Hometown Life. “Dr. Hitchcock is also very committed to our district’s work in character education.”

On a day-to-day basis, Hitchcock will work with principals to analyze data and apply it to school improvement plans, work with the Character Education Committee to develop character education opportunities, and create plans to address the district’s achievement gap and diversity issues. She’s also responsible for presentations on the district’s efforts, and coordination with outside groups like the Birmingham African American Family Network, the Student Achievement Network, and Character.org.

The new position comes during an important cultural moment at the school and nation that centers on character, and it could fill a critical need.

University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter diagnosed the issue in The Death of Character.

“When one couples a steady evacuation of cultural [taken-for-granted assumptions and commitments] with the weakening of key socializing institutions, one has, in effect, undermined the social and cultural conditions necessary for the cultivation of good character,” Hunter wrote.

Hitchcock certainly faces a significant challenge—to strengthen the Birmingham schools, and the families that rely on them, through the crucial role of forming character.

And she’s excited to get started.

“This new opportunity will allow me to continue to work with staff, students and families in a broader capacity,” she wrote in an announcement to Beverly Elementary parents.

Hitchcock and others charged with the responsibility of character education and equity—whether in the classroom or in an office—are building relationships at the core of their work, and many would likely benefit from education professor Kathryn Roe’s wise counsel from her experiences as a teacher at a juvenile detention facility and later as a principal.

North Dakota students in need of hope

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Survey says: North Dakota students feel hopeless.

The national Youth Risk Behavior Survey results for North Dakota show students who claimed to have attempted suicide has increased to 14 percent, from 12 percent in 2013.

Also, electronic bullying increased to 19 percent and reported feelings of hopelessness “hit a decade high of nearly 29 percent among high schoolers,” according to the Grand Forks Herald.

Those statistics have been on the rise since 2005.

The biennial survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention involved a random selection of 2,100 students from 61 North Dakota public schools, and covered topics like smoking, texting and driving, and drinking in general—all of which have decreased.

North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction Kirsten Baesler said the bullying and hopelessness stats should serve as a call to action.

“We really need to decide what we can do as a school system and as a state to make sure our students are feeling engaged with life around them, make sure they are feeling hopeful about their future and drilldown into what is causing them to feel hopeless,” she said.

The superintendent noted that the state has a bullying policy, but it will take a cultural shift to make a bigger impact in schools.

“Obviously, that policy is not working,” Baesler said. “Our students need to know that school is the safest place they can go to.”

While some administrators pointed to progress schools have made on issues like smoking or distracted driving, others pointed out that developing relationships in the community is critical to addressing bullying and suicide.

“We have to extend beyond the classroom,” Grafton Public Schools Superintendent Darren Albrecht told the Herald.

Four Winds Community School Superintendent Jeff Olson agreed.

“It isn’t just a teacher or administrator issue,” he said. “It’s an everybody issue.”

A report by the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture points to a broader cultural trend driving the issues in North Dakota and elsewhere.

The Vanishing Center of American Democracy  published in 2016 found that “despite . . . an abundance of admiration and patriotism, the mood in the nation is not positive.

“Indeed, less than 5 percent of all respondents believe that America is ‘strongly improving.’ Instead, half of all Americans believe it is in decline, some (26%) believe it is ‘strongly declining’ and the rest (23%) believe it is moderately declining.”

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Citizenship offers one way to help students assess their stress and work through it by understanding how it fits into their moral framework and influences their character.

School outreach to students, parents paying off

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Administrators at Wyoming’s Albany County School District #1 are building trust with students and parents by engaging them in important decisions about curriculum development and graduation requirements, among other issues.

ACSD #1 Superintendent Jubal Yennie explained how the district is using student voices and feedback from the community to inform the district’s strategic decision-making in a recent webinar for K12 Insight.

The education website’s blog, TrustED, outlined how the process is paying off, for both school leaders looking to improve academics as well as student and families in the district.

“One of the things we’ll be working on this year is the whole graduation requirement,” Yennie said. “We’re finding that students have a great deal to say in this conversation. One of the things that’s resonated really well at the high school is this whole notion of purpose, where they’re actually saying the choices they’re provided in their programs is driving their desire to learn.”

Yennie explained that one of his top priorities as superintendent is to build trust among students, parents, and staff, and a comprehensive school quality survey for all three groups is providing valuable feedback on things like academic support, school leadership, and safety and behavior.

“We picked up very early on that our community and our students and staff all felt that we were doing a good job,” Yennie said. “We certainly celebrated that. I think the metric we picked up out of that was nine out of 10 people said we were doing excellent or good.”

The survey also showed where local schools could do better, he said, including better connections between what students are learning in class and how they can apply it in the real world.

“I think there’s some opportunity here with the curriculum—with how we’re structuring teaching and learning in Albany County,” Yennie said. “From the survey instrument, we’ve spent a great deal of time over the past year developing a strategic plan that echoes a lot of these concerns we’re seeing here.”

By establishing trust with students, ACSD #1 is also offering a sense of purpose—an element University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter explains is crucial to developing good character.

“Implicit in the word character is a story. It is a story about living for a purpose that is greater than the self,” Hunter wrote in The Tragedy of Moral Education in America. “Though this purpose resides deeply within, its origins are outside the self, and so it beckons one forward, channeling one’s passions to mostly quiet acts of devotion, heroism, sacrifice, and achievement.”

In other words, student voice is important not as mere self-expression, but in connecting to a purpose that’s bigger than the self.

The Jubilee Centre offers a resource on connecting to a purpose in one’s life, asking students to imagine that they are looking back on their lives 70 or 80 years from now and to reflect on whether they have lived well.

Michigan students safeguarding their peers through technology

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Four seniors at Michigan’s Midland High School are concerned about sexual assault on college campuses, so they built a smartphone app to keep students safe.

Seniors Gwynne Ozkan, Emma Jamrog, Preston Millward, and Gerard Bringard designed the app to track students as they move from “safe zones” to “danger zones” on college campuses and entered the idea in the Congressional App Challenge—a nationwide contest to inspire students to code.

Millwood, who coded the app to “make a difference in the world,” told NBC 25 he was honored when Michigan U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar sent the students an award letter in December recognizing their efforts.

“Most of the letters I get from colleges the signatures are all digital and not actual signatures, but from John Moolenaar I could tell it was an actual signature from him and that was really cool,” he said.

“The gratification we had when we received an actual award from our congressman really helped to show our hard work actually paying off,” Ozkan added.

NBC 25 explained how the app works:

In the app, campus security would designate safe zones—for example, a library or dorms. Students turn the app on when they leave safe zones and enter a danger zone, such as while walking alone at night.

If students don’t turn the app off when they reach a safe zone, the app alerts campus security of the student’s location, and security can call the student to check on him or her.

“We achieved our goal of what we want to do which is increase safety on college campuses, because we saw that as a really pertinent issue,” Ozkan said.

In essence, the app is the kind of authentic learning that allows students to use their skills to help others.

It’s a part of the give and take between students and their world that University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, describes in his book The Death of Character.

“I take it is a given that learning (as well as life itself) is dialectical or reciprocal in nature,” Hunter wrote. “The individual acts in the world, to be sure, but the world also acts back on the individual.”

Teachers in all subject areas can engage their students in authentic learning projects that address the real needs of their friends, classmates, and neighbors using resources available on Edutopia.org and other sites.

Educators at Crellin Elementary, for example, offer a framework that inspires student service work at their Oakland, Maryland school, where they said the focus is on helping students connect what they learn in the classroom with the real world.